


Pretty and Witty

by PlaidIsTheBestPattern



Series: Image [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Featuring: Jeff and Britta's canon sexual relationship, Gen, Jeff Winger Has Issues, Jeff's canon feelings for Annie that he avoids acting on, Post-Episode: s01e18 Basic Geneology, Post-Episode: s02e18 Critical Film Studies, Some based on canon dialogue, Some stuff just Jeff Winger headcanons, Statutory Rape, This is basically just a bunch of disjointed stories with a common theme, Underage sex is not graphic but is mentioned, and Craig's sexual harassment of Jeff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25489906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidIsTheBestPattern/pseuds/PlaidIsTheBestPattern
Summary: “Once the shame and the fear wore off, I was just glad they thought I was pretty.“Interconnected stories on Jeff Winger’s obsession with his appearance.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, Britta Perry/Jeff Winger, Michelle Slater/Jeff Winger
Series: Image [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846672
Comments: 13
Kudos: 73





	Pretty and Witty

10-year-old Jeff Winger looked down at his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shoes, sniffling and slumping his shoulders down as far as possible, trying to make himself small.

Somewhere above him, his mother sighed. “We don’t have time for this, Jeffrey. I’m sorry, but this really isn’t as big of a deal as you make it seem.”

“It is a big deal!” He cried, remembering the kids at school, the parents who might see him and laugh... Jesus—what would his dad think if he was here?

Jeff hadn’t seen his dad in over a year, but he still remembered how he insulted Jeff the last time he was around—laughed after Jeff tried out for baseball—said that he should just join the little girls with their dolls, because he wasn’t any good at throwing or catching a ball.

As an adult, Jeff knows that he can’t throw and catch well because William never showed him how, and he had no right to criticize Jeff over his his own failings as a father—too busy being gone all the time to teach Jeff anything or spend any time with him. But as a kid, he believed it. He believed there was something wrong with him and that was why he couldn’t throw and catch like his daddy wanted. He cried when his dad laughed at him, spawning more cutting jokes about how he needed to toughen himself up and be a real man.

Dad left just a few months later, and no matter what mom said, a part of Jeff thought that it was his fault, for not being good at baseball. Even now, despite being able to look at it from an adult’s perspective... despite the fact that thinking it out loud makes it sound ridiculous... he still can’t make the feeling go away. It has haunted for 32 years.

Jeff was supposed to be Leonardo—the leader of the TMNT—not some stupid princess—not a girl like dad thought—not something that everyone at school would laugh and humiliate him for being if they knew.

Alex Thomas, who is a big-time bully at school, lives 12 houses down from Jeff, and if he sees him in this costume, Jeff knows the whole school will find out and Jeff will never overcome the year he dressed up as a princess for Halloween.

Still.

His mouth waters, and the other kids at school tomorrow will have candy, and if Jeff doesn’t, there will be more insults—more questions—“Why didn’t your daddy take you trick-or-treating, Jeff?” And Jeff wants candy. He wants it.

So, sobbing even as he does, he submits to his frazzled “just come off a 12 hour shift at the hospital and don’t have time for this” mom’s wishes, and lets her help him into the pink dress, and cover his mullet with the long blonde wig.

In the mirror, he really does look like a girl, and it makes him cry again, seeing himself and hating that he can’t look man enough.

It doesn’t help when he goes to the house next door, with the old couple Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, who have known Jeff since he was a baby and ought to recognize him, but don’t.

They open the door, see Jeff in the shiny pink dress and blonde wig, and give a simultaneous coo. “Ohh... what a beautiful costume, young lady!” “Oh yes—you look so pretty in that dress!” 

Jeff’s face feels like it heats 100 degrees, and he wrings his hands around the handle of his Halloween basket. “I’m not a girl!” He shouts, tears biting at his eyes. “It’s me! Jeffrey Winger!”

The elderly couple squints at him in unison, then one after another, “Oh!” “Oh wow! Jeffrey, that’s you under there?”

He watches their lips curve up into barely concealed smiles. They want to laugh at him. They want to _laugh_ at him.

Jeff’s shoulders curve inward further, hunching over, bracing for them to laugh. Mrs. Peterson hides her laughter as a cough, giving Jeff a nice handful of candy, and then closes the door after hastily wishing him a good night. He can hear them laughing at him on the other side of the door.

Jeff considers going home right then. Mom didn’t even come with him, too exhausted when she came home, apologizing that she couldn’t keep her promise to come with him, and she couldn’t find the costume he wanted in stock last minute at the store, and the princess costume is all they had left in his size. She’s sorry, okay? She’s sorry, but she’s at her wits end, and she’s exhausted, and she didn’t have time to think about getting Jeff’s costume until she was on her way home today, and Jeff just has to deal with it or not trick-or-treat at all if it’s that important, and she promises she’ll make it up to him later—that she’ll spend the whole day with him Saturday and they’ll get ice cream and see a movie.

Jeff sees the other kids at a distance, dressed in their various costumes, running together, laughing, and he wants....

He doesn’t go home.

He trudges to the next house, and the next, and gets laughed at, and one man glares at him menacingly when he says he’s a boy—whispering something to his wife in hushed tones, and not giving him any candy before shutting the door in his face. He thinks about how the expressions of the people at each house had transformed—from doe-eyed smiles to barely concealed mocking laughter or hostility... How he was treated fine at each house _before_ he revealed that he was a boy in a girl’s costume. He decides, since his pride is already hurt anyway, there’s no sense in hurting it further by admitting to anyone anymore that he’s not a girl. It just makes things even more humiliating, even if it hurts that they think he’s a girl. He’ll just... pretend that that’s what he is, and hope no one notices or recognizes him.

He goes to the next house, Mrs. Candice’s. He knocks on the door, and when she opens it, she gives a gasp. “My my! What a pretty little girl. Don’t you just look cute as a button!” Jeff bites his lip to stifle the protest that he’s a boy. “I think a little princess as pretty as you deserves extra candy, don’t you?”

Jeff is surprised. He looks up at her with wide, shocked eyes.

She smiles back dotingly, “You look gorgeous, sweetie, here—have _three_ handfuls of candy.”

She dumps it all into his basket, tells him one more time how pretty he looks, then closes the door with a wave goodbye.

Jeff stands there for a moment, stunned. He looks down at the huge helping of candy in his basket. He looks at himself in the reflection of the windows on either side of Mrs. Candice’s door.

Pretty. Gorgeous. Cute as a button.

He wonders when the last time it was that he was complimented about anything. Mom tells him he’s “special”, but she never says why. She never says what makes him special, and dad never gave him anything but insults.

Pretty.

Jeff goes to the next house, and the next.

More compliments. More candy. More than he remembers getting any year before now, though maybe it’s just his imagination.

Everyone says something... nice: Pretty. Beautiful. Gorgeous eyes. Cute little nose. Adorable freckles.

And those are things that are true not because he’s dressed as a girl. Girls and boys both have eyes and noses and freckles... which means Jeff’s eyes and his nose and his freckles really are cute. It means... it means Jeff is pretty.

The shame and the fear gradually wears off from house to house, and Jeff is just happy that people think he’s pretty.

* * *

Jeffrey has to attend his parents divorce proceedings. He doesn’t know why he even has to be there. It isn’t like he’s has a say. It isn’t like they need to him to express his feelings about custody arrangements. Dad doesn’t even want partial custody. Doesn’t want Jeff every other week, on weekends, or every other weekend, or once a month. He doesn’t want him at all.

It doesn’t stop his parents from bickering—using him as a weapon—with Mom shouting that Dad is a selfish asshole who doesn’t give a shit about his own son, and Dad calling her a money-grubbing whore who wants to live off his money using their son as an excuse for handouts.

Jeff’s mom’s divorce lawyer wears a slick suit, perfectly pressed. His hair is gelled back, his skin is clear and tan, his teeth are white as snow. He’s clearly fit underneath his suit, and he exudes a kind of confidence that Jeff’s never seen. The lawyer winks at the judge at one point, and her stone cold exterior melts ever so slightly in the face of his 1000-watt smile.

Mom’s divorce lawyer gets an extra $200 per month in child support out of that lawyer, but even Jeff is old enough to know that the only person coming out of the court room happy is the lawyer himself, who got paid far more than the value of Mom’s child support payments, and enters and leaves with the same easy, cocky, smile... not a care in the world, while Jeff’s world is crumbling.

He sees the lawyer not caring, and he tries to harden himself into someone who doesn’t care either.

* * *

Jeff is 12 when he starts dabbing the oil off of his pizza with napkins at school.

The other kids make fun of him for it—Tim, who‘s on the baseball team, has naturally clear skin, and who got a whole foot taller over the previous summer, asks Jeff if he’s “anorexic or something”. His friends laugh at his “joke”.

Jeff bites back that he almost wishes he was, so that he could have an excuse to go to the bathroom to throw up whenever Tim got up to read one of his assignments to their speech class and mispronounced every other word, because his mommy clearly wrote his papers for him. Jeff can’t make fun of Tim’s looks, so he attacks his intelligence and his independence. It isn’t even all that good of a comeback in Jeff’s opinion, but middle schoolers are as easily entertained as they are insecure. Tim draws back in shock, silenced for the first time all year from his incessant prattling, and the other kids in earshot give an “ohhhhh” and laugh.

So Jeff learns that he can do more to get attention besides getting a six pack. He can be cold and sarcastic and biting, and people will love his wit. It’s something else he can hone into a weapon, to draw people in and keep them away all at the same time.

* * *

He’s 14 the first time he passes out from low blood sugar.

He’s sent to the school nurse, given water, and it revives him. His mom gets called, and she freaks the hell out, and takes him to the doctor. The doctor runs a blood test, but he isn’t concerned at all, giving a pointed look at Jeff and telling his mother that he’s in better shape than half of the athletes they see, and he just needs to remember not to skip breakfast before hitting the gym.

Jeff learns to hate eating carbs. He learns to despise sugar, so much so that looking at a candy bar or a soda fills him with disgust and some sort of squirming, simmering emotion he can’t name at the time, but later, as an adult in therapy, comes to identify as shame. 

That same year, his remaining baby fat finally starts to go away. At the time, he attributes the improvement to his obsessive exercise and dieting finally paying off. As an adult, he suspects that he simply matured, and had such a massive growth spurt that he ended up a head taller than everyone else in his class and the basketball coach at school started trying to recruit him. His shoulders got broader and his jaw got sharper, and he started to really turn heads.

Girls had already started to give him some attention before he got tall, but afterwards, his popularity explodes. He starts noticing their eyes cutting toward him as they giggle in little groups, while he walks down the hall with an attitude like he doesn’t care—like he isn’t relishing the fact that they think he’s pretty—that they want him… because that wouldn’t be cool in the way that 80s action stars have lead him to believe is cool. Cool people don’t care. They accept admiration as a natural reaction to their existence, and let it wash over them, and it only makes people want them more.

People know his name. They whisper it and shout it and use it to define all his behavior—all that is him, just being “Jeff Winger”. 

Some guys get aggressive and jealous over the attention he gets from girls, others want to be like him. Jeff smoothly avoids getting into fights with the former through the only skill he cares to hone at school—snarky, sarcastic, disarming comments. He pretends to ignore the latter, but a part of him relishes in the praise—in being admired.

He slacks off at school and turns in bullshit assignments, but still charms half of his teachers enough to get passing grades, melting their severity the same way his mom’s divorce lawyer melted the presiding judge all those years ago.

Few people see past his front. Those that do find him insufferable, but Jeff just ignores them, because there are plenty of people who like him, and he doesn’t need to focus on the ones that don’t—who don’t mean anything anyway, and are probably just jealous of his popularity.

* * *

Jeff's 16, and he feels high on his own self-image, and a part of him knows that he is. But he embraces it—owns it. He only really recognizes the folly of his ego in moments when someone calls his image into question.

He asks the hottest girl in school out on a date. She’s stuck up and vain, but that just makes the challenge more enticing.

She turns him down flat like he’s nothing, says loudly in the cafeteria that he has bad skin.

People laugh. They laugh because everybody knows how obsessed Jeff Winger is with himself—how something as simple as that could break him down. And Jeff has to show that it doesn’t. So he laughs too, and gives her a smile like knives. He doesn’t even know what he says back to her. His ears are ringing with panic that he refuses to let crack the surface, his mouth forms words, and he is, in some detached way, aware of her gasping in shock and people laughing louder. She storms out of the cafeteria with tears in her eyes.

Jeff doesn’t flee like she does. He smiles easily and sits through the rest of school like nothing happened.

It’s when he goes home that the mask drops. He looks obsessively at his skin in the mirror, searching every single pore, nearly clawing at his skin in his desperate attempt to unearth whatever she saw that was short of perfection. He finds nothing, but the hottest girl in school did, so Jeff knows there has to be something there.

He demands his mom take him to a dermatologist to get something for his face. He develops a 20-minute skin care routine. His face glows. He tans. He keeps working out, and he insults and flirts with the girl who turned him down every day in turns, to prove her comments never bothered him, even as she rolls her eyes and bites back her own insults.

They end up screwing senior year.

* * *

Slater nearly breaks up with him when he won’t label them as girlfriend and boyfriend despite their very sexual relationship.

He admits that he has commitment issues, and somehow, he talks her into giving him another chance, because he doesn’t want to lose her.

She’s hot and witty, and she makes him think of the successful lawyer he used to be, before his fake degree came back to bite him in the ass. She thinks he’s clever and hot, and they have great sex, and he’s elated when he convinces her to stick around, even if it meant he had to put himself out there and admit that he didn’t want to lose what they had.

But just a few weeks later, she’s standing in the hallway with him and saying she wants to break up—that she just isn’t feeling a spark anymore—that he’s very hot and charming, but she’s looking for something more. Just like that, their relationship is through, and Jeff pretends that it doesn’t matter. He smiles at her, parts amiably like he hadn’t offered her the boyfriend/girlfriend label weeks ago purely so she wouldn’t do something just like this.

* * *

If someone persistently treated anyone in the study group the way that Dean Pelton treats Jeff, Jeff would have had a very serious (and threatening if necessary) conversation with that person a long time ago.

Instead, life goes on, and Jeff makes disgusted faces when Craig touches him, and rolls his eyes and walks away when he says something flirty, and it’s just… normal.

It just feels like a settled routine. Jeff is used to being desired—by women, by men too. He’s had plenty of men hit on him, and usually denies them with a confident, practiced, “Thank you for the compliment. I know I’m hot and it makes sense for you to desire me. Unfortunately, I don’t bat for your team.”

Clearly, the study group isn’t bothered by Craig’s behavior, because nobody in the study group ever says… anything. When Craig walks into the study room and lays a hand on Jeff’s shoulder or feels up his abs, it’s like nobody even notices—like it isn’t even happening. Because it’s normal for Jeff to be desired, and it’s normal for Jeff to be objectified, and to objectify others, and to objectify himself.

So Jeff repeatedly rebuffs Craig’s advances, and Craig flirts again, and the study group doesn’t bat an eye, and that’s just how it is.

Jeff has never met a more persistent, clueless man.

But maybe, possibly, it’s nice to be desired to the degree that he’s made Craig faint on at least three occasions… even if he isn’t at all interested.

Plus he can use Craig’s hopeless, stupid crush to his advantage.

* * *

  
  
Britta straddles his lap and grinds down while aggressively attacking his mouth and they both make gross noises while making out on his couch with their mutually terrible alcohol breath. Their movements are clumsy and the rest of the group (anyone watching them actually) would judge them tremendously if they knew (especially if they were aware that this was just one more of at least a dozen casual drunken hook ups they’ve had lately).

They’re both idiots, and way too similar and different from each other all at once, which leads to a sexually charged atmosphere that sometimes culminates in sex. Usually alcohol is involved. Usually they wake up hungover—sometimes at his, sometimes at hers, but always, _always_ , fighting over the rights to the toilet the next morning (eventually they settle the matter with Jeff getting first rights to puke provided that her holds Britta’s hair while she throws up after).

They both usually regret hooking up in the morning after they’re sober, because the truth is, (they both agree) they really bicker too much to get along as anything even resembling a couple for more than a few hours at a time, and annoy the shit out of each other half the time just by breathing. So they should probably stop having sex.

But they probably won’t, because despite the fact that they kind of think of each other as the worst, they also kind of like each other a lot, and understand each other really well, and like having ridiculous spontaneous sex behind the group’s back.

Britta groans and pulls back, lips pink and swollen from kissing, eyes heavy with alcohol just like his. “You’re really pretty,” She admits, patting his face, hand clumsily graising his stubble.

“I know,” He replies easily, going in for another kiss.

Britta pulls back so she can keep looking at him through squinty eyes. “You’re really pretty but bad. This’s bad. ‘Cause… pretty’s’ll you really’re, Isssn’t it, Jeffreyyy Wingerrr?”

Jeff looks back at her through a pleasant alcohol haze, saying nothing, just waiting for her to finish talking so they can get back to not talking.

“Yerrr jus’ pretty ’n sexy and witty n’ pret’n yer not caring ‘bout nothin’ and all you are’s a pretty face… n’there’s nothin’ underneath…. isn’t that ri’, pretty boyyy….”

“Stop psych’n’ilizn’ me. Yer not a real th’r’p’st,” Jeff replies.

She makes her signature sour face, then starts making out with him again.

After they’ve had sex and they’re curled together, about to both pass into the land of dreams, her arms wrapped around his bare torso from behind, she murmurs, “Yer no’ jus’ a pretty face, Jeffffff. You jus… you jus preten’ you are, and it drives me…. crazy…” She starts snoring.

Jeff starts snoring too, five seconds later.

* * *

Jeff stands in front of his bathroom mirror, freshly showered and in his underwear.

He looks at his reflection, staring into his own eyes, then lets his gaze drift down, inspecting his chest and then his abdomen.

His heart pounds wildly in his chest, and the hand that holds his cell phone to his ear is trembling and he listens and hopes someone picks up on the other end of the line.

Just as he’s about to hang up, someone does answer.

“Hey, baby,” A sultry voice intones. “What can I do for you tonight?”

Jeff looks down at the scar right above his hip, from his childhood “appendix surgery”. His hand traces the raised skin, but he cringes away as he feels the give in the flesh around it. He tries to tell himself he’s just imagining things—that he still has a six pack so there’s no way he’s really put on that much fat. He wishes it worked, but it doesn’t. And more and more lately, he’s seen his hair circling down the drain in the shower, and he’s noticed that some of it isn’t growing back, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line questions.

Jeff swallows. “My name’s Jeff,” He tells her. “I weigh 400 pounds.”

She doesn’t say anything back.

She hears this all the time, he’s sure, and she’s just waiting for him to tell her what he wants.

Jeff looks at his face in the mirror again—at the terror there.

“Can you just… can you tell me I’m pretty? That… that you want me?”

“Of course, baby,” The woman’s voice says easily.

Jeff takes a breath.

“You’re so pretty, baby… so so pretty. You know… I like my men with a bit more meat on ‘em. More of them to hold and squeeze onto.”

Jeff closes his eyes tight, trying to ignore that she’s practically intoned the “more of you to love” cliche.

“Everybody has their type, Jeff, and mine is larger men, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I’d love to see that beautiful body of yours and feel it give under my hands and do so many things to it…”

Jeff’s throat feels tight. He doesn’t even know why he’s doing this... Why he’s putting himself through this just to hear lies someone on the other end of the phone is being paid to tell him.

“What color are your eyes, Jeff?”

Jeff opens them, looks at his eyes in the mirror. They're red rimmed and possibly a bit swollen. He can't bring himself to look closely enough to tell. “Blue.”

“Oh, I bet they’re beautiful. I bet they’re kind and full of honesty. I bet you’re a very kind man, Jeff, and that your eyes have a soul of their own.”

Jeff’s eyes aren’t kind. They’re full of shit. Full of lies. The whole conversation he’s having right now is a lie.

“And your voi—“

Jeff hangs up the phone.

* * *

Jeff knows that Annie is offended by him treating her like a child. She wants to be respected and seen as a peer. More than that—she wants to be seen as a romantic interest. He apologizes for babying her but still imposes boundaries, or outright denies what she perceives as signals of mutual attraction. He tells her he doesn’t know what he wants, that she’s reading into things, that it’s not appropriate.

She thinks he’s an asshole, and/or a creep, and/or a jerk with massive commitment issues, and/or a self-centered bastard.

She isn’t wrong about any of it, but she also doesn’t know everything that she thinks she does.

Annie doesn’t know that his first sexual experience was with a girl at school who unexpectedly moved away a week later.

Annie doesn’t know that his second ever sexual experience in life was with a teacher at his high school.

Annie doesn’t know that Mrs. Allison had a huge rack, ruby red lipstick, and porcelain skin.

Annie doesn’t know that Mrs. Allison was 35 and Jeff was was 17; that every guy in school had the hots for her, but Jeff was the only one she had her eyes on— _devouring_ him in class through stolen glances, and Jeff had known, and he had _relished_ it for months with barely concealable smiles and butterflies in his belly that he couldn’t seem to quell, no matter how stupid and childish he knew his nerves were.

Annie doesn’t know that Jeff was stupid and naive enough to think that Mrs. Allison actually cared about him, but that after they fucked once at her house while her husband was gone for the weekend, she immediately pulled out of his embrace, threw him his pants, told him to get out even when his eyes flooded with tears, and pretended he was a normal student for the rest of high school, like nothing ever happened.

Annie doesn’t know that when she and Jeff kissed at the transfer dance, Jeff could only enjoy it for a moment before he was tasting Mrs. Allison’s lipstick.

Jeff is pretty and witty, and he knows he’s pretty and witty, and he relishes that he’s pretty and witty, because it means that people feel attracted him, and that matters, because he actually puts a lot of effort into being pretty and witty.

But the problem is, being pretty and witty is all Jeff is. Deep down, he knows that he is disposable. Beneath a pretty and witty exterior, there’s nothing but hollowness inside him.

He’s known that since he was eight years old.

So he disposes of others first, and he closes his eyes and thinks of the taste of Mrs. Allison’s lipstick, and he tells Annie not to read into things.


End file.
